Saturday, March 29, 2008
New support for alternative Florida delegate plan
WE’VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com
The Ledger in Lakeland, FL is reporting that Jon Ausman, the head of Florida’s DNC delegation, has two proposals for allocating Florida’s delegates that will honor the spirit of the election results while not seating them entirely as is.
Ausman, who is also the DNC member appealing the DNC’s decision to strip Florida of it’s superdelegates and its 100% delegate penalty, has devised two different approaches for how the delegates can be allocated.
From the Ledger’s article:
Ausman’s first equation, resulting in a six-delegate net for Clinton, involves halving the state’s number of unpledged delegates and then applying the state’s primary results by congressional district as called for in the party’s own rules.
The second formula, resulting in a 19-delegate net for Clinton, reverses the math, applying the state’s primary results by congressional district to the state’s unpledged delegates and then halving that number. Obama’s campaign has all but rejected the second formula, Ausman said.
Apparently the proposals are under review by DNC staff and could be in front of the Rules and Bylaws Committee by next week. However, Ausman wants a ruling on his two pending appeals of the earlier committee decisions regarding Florida’s delegates before they consider these new proposals.
It seems like there may be some possibility of a resolution to Florida’s delegation before the convention. As always we’ll keep you apprised.
Posted by 2009 Journal Writer at 3:22 AM 
What part of “these are the rules, everyone agreed to them, and they stand as agreed to” don’t people understand? The time to have dealt with this was before the agreement. You can’t change the rules after the fact just because it will benefit you. I’m in Florida and while I voted, I knew that my vote wouldn’t count. I’ve accepted that. It’s time to stop trying to change the rules and it’s time to just move on.
is there any chance we can seat some pledged delegates from Florida, but find a way to 100% lock out their “super” delegates?
Are there any plans out that would have that result?
Good point Baldwin Park Democrat! 🙂
There’s not really any plan to lock out the Supers from Florida. The main point being is that the movement of the election would not have affected the votes of the Supers. Because they are not bound by any election, the earlier primary didn’t necessarily affect their vote to begin with. In addition, most Supers are members of Congress or members of the DNC – probably the only two Democratic groups who had the least amount of influence on the state legislature moving the date.
I don’t understand why there wasn’t as much concern months ago. They knew the votes weren’t going to count. They is no reason to use any of the votes that were already cast. It was not a true vote for various reasons.